Magnificent Modern Marvels!

Well it is magnificent.  I traveled back to my beloved Bristol today as soon as I had learned that they had completed the bridge in my absence.  The grace and elegance of the structure suspended across the Clifton gorge was certain to reinvigorate the heart after a deep slumber.  But the magnificence of my design was minute by comparison to the structures and transport machinery I observed on my way there.  I travelled with the aid of a companion who took me in his private carriage.  The prodigious speed and level of control was disconcerting.  80mph in a carriage with no rails!  The braking capacity was formidable and enough to unsteady the nerve of a Victorian engineer.  When I asked the operator of the carriage to describe the motor within, he seemed dumbfounded.  I believe it to be still a reciprocating engine of some sort, but so quiet and without steam.  He mentioned cylinders and pistons but could not engage in any interesting discourse.  How the operator of such machinery should remain so ignorant of its workings I can only guess.

Still, one only had to observe the world within and out-with the carriage to be utterly convinced that mankind's progression of technology has been exponential.  Even the quality of the glass that permitted such observation .... How did they get it so flat? Such distractions.  Such scale and complexity!  All in a mere 150 years!  Magnificent.  And it was only when we started to ascend a structure leading straight out and over the Severn estuary itself did I realise that I really had entered a new era for mankind.  Not one bridge but two bridges across the Severn estuary to Bristol and I am somewhat immodest to point out that they use the same suspended configuration that I myself first used in Clifton!  Once we got to my own seemingly modest structure, I had to contain my amazement and appreciation of my own bridge for fear that my contemporary colleagues would take me for a simple-minded fool.

I have decided to retire to the city of Dublin for a period.  I always liked it there and I would like to catch up on that interesting atmospheric railway project Charles Vignoles completed there.  I requested carriage on the Dublin steam packet from Liverpool.  This has been replaced by a contraption called the "Sea Cat" sailing from Holyhead, from which I write this note.  Such speed across water and queer hull structure perplexes m mind.  Alas, it is a propeller-less craft, it seems, and I dare not speculate what machinery can be spouting such vast quantities of water rearward to propel the craft forward with such celerity.  Perhaps that propeller invention did not have the legs I thought it might have had.  I had counted on a bit more time for the crossing of the Irish sea to collect my thoughts but I now find it takes a mere 2 hours.  This is now a frantic world, uncivilised even.  If truth be told, I am struggling to maintain control of my wits.  There is so much to learn.  Perhaps I will not cope?

I must confess a certain disquiet in my soul.  Was I right to assume that technological progress was the only true progress?  In this modern world, technology has unleashed an abundance of energy to the masses ....the largely ignorant masses as far as the technology around them is concerned, it seems to me.  Where does the energy come from?  Man now truly has mother nature clamped tightly in his vice.  In his ignorance, will he squeeze too tight?  But I vex myself.  I am sure that there is order.  I am sure that when I find some solitude and look into the matter, I can put my mind at ease.

I arrive at Kingston in 10 minutes.  It is called "Dun Laoghaire" now.  There has been some political changes that I must catch up upon.  There is so much to learn.  I cannot help but think that the scale of changes in the last 150 years is many times more significant in terms of human history than the preceding 150 years with which I am more familiar.  I just hope mankind has not bitten off more than he can chew.